Monday, April 6, 2009

Almost midnight Sunday night - to my surprise I'mstill alive. In fact, I feel quite chipper as Inibble on cheese and crackers and sip some sort ofexotic brew - half tea and half lemonade and allto the good, say I. These little round cheeses in their waxcertainly do delight in every way - not only the taste whenyou finally get to it but the whole unwrapping process with its redcrackles and crinkles. Red is the key, red andthe whole Nantucket mystique. There's no way all thistea and lemonade can come from thattiny island; maybe maybe they drink a lot of it there, ormaybe it's as snobbishly superior to all other cool drinks as Nantucket is toall other places one can visit. Personally I prefer the channel islandsoff the coast of southern California - but Nantucket - oh, you know,all those whalers, all those widows and their rooftop walks. Martha'sVineyard with its blueberries is a really great place to be too, atleast for part of the year. There's a great merry-go-round in town with abrass ring and there are community sings every week in a big barn. Com-munity sings are the best, with the words up on a screen and a "follow thebouncing ball" over the words to keep everyone together. And all thiswith a little whole-wheat cracker and a tiny Edam cheese; I popped ahole in the mesh around the cheese with a pen. Once I met a guy,though, who though he'd met everyone there is to meet had never been onMartha's Vineyard and, learning that I had been to summer-camp there,and knowing that his girlfriend had lived there, thought this would bea bond between us, not realizing that the campers were the bane of theresidents's existence. I had nothing against her of course but I suregot the scornful nod of dismissal. Never mind, I thought, I was theBest All-Round Camper then and I can be a good camper now, & I'll bet Ican swim better than she can, too. And memories of hotblueberry-picking afternoons, hearing the bell-like sound of eachberry dropping into the pail, until the bottom was covered; eat aberry, drop a berry in the pail, eat a berry, drop a berry. And backat camp, singing the "Indian Love Song" while turning the freezerhandle for hours to make ice-cream to put on the pie. Although I know,of course, that it was wonderful, I don't even remember eating the pie.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

I don't know whether to see this as willful idiocy or justmidnight hunger: I took out a box of Safeway whole-wheatcrackers and some of those little round Baby Bel cheeses I'm so fond of,played with the charming unwrapping process until cheese andcracker lay bare. The midnight hungers do hit hard some nights buttonight I have already been feeling nauseated not only by thepaucity of interesting news but also by having combined somefoods at dinner that ought not be combined and are still working out thespace allocation down there where they all landed. All the while thinking of aplan for kindly slaughter that I read about in a magazine put out byautistic people. You treat the animals well, walk them up a rampsingle file. At the head of the line you draw aside one animal at atime onto a separate track where it meets the guillotine all unaware.

After a half-hour or so of this, I decide that I am, after all, avegetarian, and need not trouble my mind with these matters. Mystomach has decided trying to settle down is a lost cause. As for therest of me, oh, good, here comes the nurse with a bunch oftranquilizers.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

I wanna know what it's like to die.Will I see Skye? Will I reallyfly? Will I never be able to taste tiramisu againand are there pleasures after death greater than taste? Soon I'll find out,of course, but I'd like to know about it while I'm stillalive. This little pain in the middle of my chestannoys me; is it trying to tell me not to worry? Well, really,worried I'm not; I'm inquisitive. Noanswers in sight, I believe, so I think I'll lie down andclose my mind to all that, think aboutLeonard Cohen.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

not 20 minutes ago, don't Iremember? Of course I don'tremember; whywould I ask for one now if Iremembered? I wonder what harm there would be,though, if I had too manybreathingtreatments. Too much breathing - can that bebad? I guess it can though it's hard to seejust how. Too bad there's nowhere to store a littleextra breathing to use later on when I'm short. In themeanwhile the cake crumbs are all gone so there goesthat entertainment. Guess I'll just have to sit here andtry to remember breathing until it comesback to me. Meanwhile thesenew glasses pinch mynose. Always something, isn't there? I'll be gladwhen it's time for breakfast and I can sayno oatmeal thanks, nocorn flakes either; what about a strip ofwell-done bacon and somehot buttered toast?

Monday, March 9, 2009

Here in this room with thecurtains closed for many a moon, theremight as well not be a moon, for all Ican see, though no doubt there is one all rightgoing round and round (as I am too) up there with theasteroids and debris - how much debris? I wish Icould see. I say goodnight to it anyway, imagining itwould miss me if I didn't, as I would certainly miss it ifit were gone. So many moons have gone by that I will soon be87 - imagine! When my grandfather died at 80 wethought he was really, really old (although a couple of years before thathe made my mother angry by requiring us to visit a relative inTaunton just because she was over 90. He wanted us kids to meet her,but my mom did not think kids should be meeting old people just becausethey were old - in fact, I don't think she thought we should be meetingold people anyway, though my grandfather was already over 80 andseemed old to us. Oh, Grandpa! Imagine - he took me to see Shakespeareand also Gilbert and Sullivan when Mom wouldn't & wouldn'teven go herself; she thought these things frivolous. I remember her arguing with a friend about Steinbeck ("I've lived "Grapes of Wrath - I don't need to dwell on it") and Noel Coward ("He's very smart I'm sure but what does he have to say? Nothing.") Mom liked to read The Reader's Digest though she sometimes had to have her friend Coby explain it to her. She frequently said that she felt sorry for me because I was smart. Meanwhile I didn't feel that smart, though I did feel she could be smarter if she wanted to be; once she said (though she herself wore pants at home) "Women don't wear men's clothing," and when I said "George Sands did" her retort was "Yes, but you're not George Sands." This was how I learned that I could just ignore her, an odd lesson but useful a few years later when she and her friend Scottie were shocked to learn that I wanted to take German, not Spanish, as my language requirement. Spanish they thought very useful in business; German useless for anything and perhaps dangerous. Oh the craziness of yesteryear and how odd that I had to take it seriously. And craziest of all, Fraulein Schnieders, the German teacher, actually turned out to be a real German spy! Just the same I learned some good German from her and had some good arguments with her about Goethe (I didn't like him - still don't). After the war I ended up, to my astonishment ("Who cares how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?") in the philosophy department with Suzanne Langer's "New Key," and have been happy ever since to call myself a philosopher. And soon it will be my birthday and I still don't know what phase the moon is in right now. I'd like to have my grandfather's grandfather clock, tall as the room and showing every day just where the moon was, in case the clouds obscured it when looking through the window. Of course, though, Grandpa had to get the key and wind it up every week or it wouldn't show anything aright; how exciting it was to see the weights go up to the top again, the pendulum swinging away. And you could tell it was a pleasure to Grandpa to have us as audience for his magic act.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Calamitiesabound but this is one of them - to wake wonderingwhat's for breakfast only to learn that it's about half-past one in themorning. Now is when I long for that garlic spread fromColorado and some Safeway crackers, but nosuch luck; the garlic spread has yet toarrive. In my next lifeI will grow garlic - grow it, harvest it, twist it into braids,roast it, toast it, hang it all over the doors and windows, swimnight and day in its smell, and above all spread it (roasted) onSafeway whole wheat crackers and pig out. Right nowI'll dream it, I think. It's the middle of the night. I'lldream it.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Where did it come from, thatodd mix of doubt and certainty, thatmore-American-than-thou feeling? On a hillfar away there's probably an oldrugged cross and there's a brand-newred barberry bush too and I think somegoldenrod - which does not causehay fever - ragweed does - but whichused to get blamed for it, being sobright and obvious. Walking down it in the mists of morning, sevenor eight years old headed toward wisdom and passing themountain of compost from the wealthy neighbor's garden,walking down the footpath, meeting Bobby Hutchison'sbicycle path at the bottom, off past Andy's house to horse-chestnuttrees and Eddie the crossing-guard cop and school, I knewthe names of everything and everyone and said them overto myself or to mypretty little sister beside me.